Beneficios y retos de la implementación de la norma RSPO de pequeños productores independientes

Abstract

The principles of the RSPO standard seek to transform markets so that sustainable palm oil is the norm. RSPO P&C does not offer equal opportunities to small palm oil producers, for this reason the RSPO board of directors in 2017 conducted research that proposed to guarantee and ensure that small producers could achieve a sustainable livelihood through inclusion in the supply chain of sustainable palm oil and from this research the RSPO for Independent Smallholders - ISH was born. One of the reasons that motivated the research is that this standard is based on principles of sustainability (prosperity, people and planet) that for the research are translated into economic, environmental and social factors. For a small producer to decide to implement it, it is necessary to know the benefits that are obtained with the implementation, but it is also necessary to know the challenges that must be faced. The main objective of this research is to analyze the benefits and challenges of implementing the RSPO-ISH standard. In order to achieve the objective of this research, a mixed descriptive exploratory methodology was used through interviews with people linked to the oil palm productive sector and after the collection of the interviews, the Atlas-ti program was used, which allows a qualitative analysis, yielding results in codes that can be quantified. Additionally, a frame of reference generated from the literature review was considered, which included empirical studies on the topic addressed, focusing on the reality of sustainable development of oil palm production. Most of the benefits found are related to social factors such as access to markets, better agricultural practices, support to small producers, training, administrative organization, associativity and trust. Similarly, in the case of the challenges, these were identified in the social factor associated with lack of knowledge of the regulations, lack of support for small producers in matters related to agricultural practices, associativity, distrust, lack of economic resources and market access.